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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

I'll go on trip 10 or so. After heroic explorers have bravely discovered what we overlooked in the planning phase. Most likely by dying of whatever it was we didn't plan for. I suspect there is a good chance that those first colonists are going to end up like one of the early failed colonization attempts of the Americas... nasty, ugly failures that involve lots of deprivation, starvation and violence, with any hope of aid from home more than a year away. I really find the idea terrifying.

I'll go on trip 10 or so. After heroic explorers have bravely discovered what we overlooked in the planning phase. Most likely by dying of whatever it was we didn't plan for. I suspect there is a good chance that those first colonists are going to end up like one of the early failed colonization attempts of the Americas... nasty, ugly failures that involve lots of deprivation, starvation and violence, with any hope of aid from home more than a year away. I really find the idea terrifying.

It most likely won't happen though. There have been no manned missions beyond low earth orbit since December 19, 1972 - forty four years ago. During that time there have been numerous announcements about manned missions to the moon or mars - and all those programs have fizzled out.

There was a rerun of a 1984 Horizon program on BBC 4 last night. James Burke was reporting on the Apollo moon landings (which had begun fifteen years before and finished after just three years). And then the program went on to consider all the claims made for the upcoming new shuttle missions and the launching of the Space Station.

The optimists were explaining how the space station would operate commercially as it would be possible to manufacture special alloys and drugs in zero gravity that couldn't be made on Earth - and how the space station would be used to cheaply mend and resupply earth satellites rather than having the expense of launching new replacements. There was going to be a permanently manned moon base before 2000, and manned missions to Mars by about the same time.

The pessimists (realists) said that it would not be cheaper to make things in space than on earth for the foreseeable future and that it would always be cheaper to launch new satellites than retrieve or repair existing ones. They said that the shuttle was an engineering dead end and that almost any conceivable mission could be better and more cheaply carried out by robots than by manned space flights. They said that the only purpose of manned flights was to capture the public's interest - and that would only work when something new and dramatic was done. They said that a continuing presence of astronauts on a space station would not even be newsworthy after the first month or so.

And the pessimists were right. If we'd spent half the effort and money that we did on the shuttle and ISS programs on unmanned missions we could have achieved so very much more.

When Mr. Musk first posted on Twitter his intent to send a car on the Heavy launch, he said the destination was “Mars orbit.” The car will not go into orbit around Mars. Rather the second stage of the Heavy is to fire three times to send the car on an elliptical orbit around the sun that extends as far out as Mars, and that car could remain in orbit for hundreds of millions of years. At times, it might pass very close to Mars, and Mr. Musk said there was an “extremely tiny” chance that it could crash into Mars.

Just watched on live YouTube stream the Falcon Heavy launch. Simultaneous landing of the two boosters very cool! Still waiting to see if the core landed successfully on the sea barge but even if it didn't I think that test flight went spectacularly well.

If any aliens ever find all the stuff we've sent, they'll think we were trying to get a date. We've sent drawings of us naked with a map showing how to find us, a compilation audio recording, and now a sports car.

"From our moon base"
Which is funny cause building a moon base is probably a bad idea as well. For a number of the same reasons mentioned like horrible moon dust and radiation. Although some things mentioned like pressure are already issues just in space.

It kinda seems like we are being planet centric and should be considering building space colonies first. Like an orbiting habitat around mars that could take advantage of the lower gravity to more easily get resources up into space.